The Lizard Club

by Steve Abbott

Gossip! Gossip! Gossip! The Lizard Club “tells all” about the birth of San Francisco’s underground club scene. But who’s real and who’s not? Abbott’s novel suggested that in the ‘90s, we could no longer tell fact from fantasy. William Burroughs, Dennis Cooper, Robert Gluck, and Sarah Schulman praised the late Steve Abbott’s first novel, Holy Terror. This follow-up Menippean satire is equally engaging.

Fiction. "Steve Abbot's THE LIZARD CLUB is funny, angry, suspenseful and totally new. It's like a Xerox of tragedy, Pandora without her box. Read it and feel your tongue growing and growing until you can flick flies out of the air" -Kevin Killian.

Genres: Fiction

160 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1993

About the author

Steve Abbott was a Nebraska-born poet, author, cartoonist and critic of primarily LGBT literature. He was also a highly regarded editor. Abbott edited the Bay Area periodical Poetry Flash for many years and the influential SOUP Magazine. In SOUP, he coined the term "New Narrative" to describe the work of Bay Area writers Robert Gluck and Bruce Boone and, with Boone, he organized the historic Left/Write conference in 1981. He was also a single father and many of his early poems reflected on his relationship with his young daughter Alysia Abbott. He died of AIDS in San Francisco in 1992.

Reviews

[Imogen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel weird about this book because- in a very meta way- the way I feel about it has a lot more to do with its cultural context than it does with its actual content. As in, this book is annoying. It's glib pomo nineties bullshit where entire chapters are devoted to things like the results of a survey he sent out to a bunch of other glib early nineties artist types. And when he's actually telling the story, it's only occasionally very interesting- like a kind of gayer, shorter Pynchon.

So why not just hate it? Part of it is because he died from AIDS in 1993. Well, not that in itself, but that, this is a product of the culture of gay men who were dying of AIDS back then, this bleak kind of what the fuck place, you know? In that context I'm sure everything seemed pointless and stupid and might-as-well-write-about-nothing. So with that context it makes a lot more sense, and makes me want to love it.

Then I swing back though, and I'm like, a lot of the embarrassing things I did in the mid-to-late nineties when I was in high school- half a decade after this book was cutting edge- are based on the, like, legitimacy of meaninglessness, that this book is about. So I have this visceral, negative reaction to it.

THEN I SWING BACK AGAIN because not only does Kathy Acker blurb it, but her books are in the text itself. More than once.

Oh Kathy Acker. I can only trust one person in this world and she died of breast cancer in 1997.

Anyway, so... yeah. A weird artifact of its time, I guess?

[Laura Krasovec · Rating 2 out of 5]

could not even tell you what happened in this book. lots of mention of "ingesting sperm" and cannibalism. thought this was more about 90's SF life... oh how wrong i was

[Shannon Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Imagine Thomas Pynchon and Kurt Vonnegut writing as a gay Gen-Xer in 80s San Francisco.

[Luke Olaf · Rating 2 out of 5]

A book that truly killed my spirit

[Simon Cozzens · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is tough to pin down. Just read the back cover and you'll know what I mean. Some chapters are narrative, some are little lessons in history, biology, theology, music, or literature. This is a counter-cultural collage that shames the moralist human and glorifies the slimy underbelly of our hindbrains. It's a handbook for the outsider.

I will read it again for sure.

[Alvin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kinda fun, especially for queer clubsters from days of yore.